Historicity, Narrative and the Construction of Monstrosity in John Gardner’s Grendel

Abstract

The relationship between history and narrative has always been a subject of controversy among philosophers, historians and literary theorists. Is narrative the indispensible component of history? What is the function of narrative in history? How does history represent human experience with the narrative function? Is historical narrative imitation or reproduction of the past? What is the role of the historian and his constructive imagination in history writing? This article discusses these questions in the context of a literary text, Gardner’s Grendel, which is a re-writing of the Old English epic Beowulf, and with reference to phenomenological and Kantian ideas of history, narrative, the self, and imagination. Relying mainly on Hayden White, Louis Mink, and Paul Ricoeur’s ideas of history and narrative, the present article concludes that history is a reproduction of past actuality instead of an imitation of it. Thus, in the article the term history-making is preferred instead of history writing and history-making is regarded as bearing close resemblance to story-making. The chapter studies Grendel against this philosophical background in terms of how narrative plays a symbolizing, form-giving tool for consciousness in historicizing human experience and how heroism and monstrosity are historical, ideational constructs on which human experience is founded.